Dead Already!!

[shogunmaster]

September 04, 2007
A Message to Palm Customers, Partners and Developers
As many of you are aware, we are in the process of building our next generation software platform. We are very excited about how this is coming together. It has a modern flexible UI, instant performance, and an incredibly simple and elegant development environment. We are working hard on this platform and on the first smartphone that will take advantage of it.

In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts. To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market. We will, of course, continue to develop products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from our internal platform development perspective, we will focus on only one.

Because we were nearly at the point for shipping Foleo, this was a very tough decision. Yet I am convinced this is the right thing to do. Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform. Our own evaluation and early market feedback were telling us that we still have a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product, and we can not afford to make those improvements on a platform that is not central to our core focus. That would not be right for our customers or for our developer community.

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We're not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.

I would like to thank our customers for their interest in Foleo. I know there will be disappointed folks who were looking forward to carrying a Foleo for all their mobile computing needs. I am certainly one of them. I would also like to thank the developers who have supported our Foleo efforts. They have been loyal to Palm and have worked hard to deliver some compelling solutions on the Foleo platform. I know that they will understand that the right thing to do for the long run is to focus on one platform that will live for years, rather than invest energy in a one-off solution. We will make every effort to make sure we bring our developers forward to our next generation platform.

This decision will require us to take a limited charge of less than $10 million dollars to our earnings. This is a lot of money, but it is a small price relative to the costs that would be required to support two platforms going forward. This decision is in the best interest of our customers, our team, our products and our shareholders. I hope this renewed focus at Palm will allow us to deliver more compelling solutions to our core smartphone market, and it will allow us to position ourselves for the long run around one Palm experience.

-Ed Colligan, CEO

[TazUk]

Foleo CANCELLED!!

[csward75]

How bizzare, has got to be the shortest post ever on a product launch conversation, that died before it even it the full length of Treonauts conversation....

[jfa02]

however new flash the FoleoII may be in the works. I was reading in aother forum about it I believe brighthand.

[forgot]

If rumors are true, the linux os it would run would be the same as the other new palm devices. We'll see...

[TazUk]

They were quoting from a letter Palm issued to those they'd give Foleo's to. It can be read two ways really, so doesn't confirm that Foleo II exists but leaves the door open for it to be possible.

[skoenig]

I was just reading this again and laughing (and crying) at the stupidity of it, against a background of improvements, moderisation and fixes needed on the Treo platform and it's aging PalmOS...

Also, as csward75 says, the shortest product release thread and smallest board on this entire forum - and every other forum probably. I may just delete this altogether and pretend it never happened.

What say you guys?

~ Steph

[eclair]

Right hand says get rid of it. Clears space. Left hand says keep it for a posterity and future source for treology 103 class. On the other hand... there is no other hand.


sorry, couldn't resist

[csward75]

Originally Posted by skoenig

I was just reading this again and laughing (and crying) at the stupidity of it, against a background of improvements, moderisation and fixes needed on the Treo platform and it's aging PalmOS...

Also, as csward75 says, the shortest product release thread and smallest board on this entire forum - and every other forum probably. I may just delete this altogether and pretend it never happened.

What say you guys?

~ Steph

Yes, its time to say goodbye to something that has never been launched, save space for more Palm creations!!!!!

[comiken205]

I don't think that the Foleo was a complete failure. Look at the ultra light notebooks that are coming out of production now. The EEEPC, looks familiar to me.

The Foleo may have been a bust as an intended product, but paved a new path, maybe not paved, but showed a new path of light computing. That is my 2 cents and if the Foleo II comes out, I can't wait to get my hands on one.